Deven Rich

How to Recover a Dead Hard Drive

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:40:51 +0000

When a hard drive dies more often then not its is one of two things;
1. A component on the circuit has shorted out
2. The hard drive has a head crash.

In the event that the drive has a head crash one know method has been to seal the hard drive in dual zip lock bags and place it in the freezer over night. When metal gets cold it shrinks and will allow a larger gap between the read head and the drive platter. Once you take it out of the freeze there is generally a 20 minute opportunity in which to pull off data, so get the most critical stuff first!

The other more common event is that a component on the circuit board shorts; A new circuit board can be swapped on from the same model of drive.

When searching for a donor drive be sure that all of the drive specs match, including factory code, revision number, chip code ect.

The circuit board swap is a simple procedure that requires a Hex screw driver and the donor board.

the circuit dies rather then the physical components within the hard drive. In the event that its not a physical head crash

Indoor Skydiving in Las Vegas

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:59:11 +0000

If you have ever had the urge to go skydiving but haven’t been able to take the plunge you may be interested in trying indoor skydiving. Last weekend in Las Vegas i tried indoor skydiving at fly zone and had a blast! It was how ever a bit pricey but it was a life experience. This summer I will defiantly have to try the real thing.

The Gun Store Las Vegas

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:00:24 +0000

Aside from shooting a airsoft gun or a .22 I have never really experienced shooting some real guns. Luckily Vegas is the kind of city that has everything and anything, including machine guns! So what guy could resist the chance to take one for a test drive… The gun store is a popular store in vegas that lets you try out just about any gun you can think of. I did the Coalition Package which included a M249 Saw, M16 and a M9 Beretta.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zFMoDQS5jA

Tripple Screen Upgrad

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:33:37 +0000

Dual screen monitors was one of the best upgrades I have ever done. It’s a fact that they improve productivity let you have a much larger work space and are just plain cool. Recently I decided to make the plunge into triple screens. Having such a large desktop is defiantly amazing! It just may be the end to having to switch windows. Now having a triple screen pc, a laptop and an iMac all on one desk may be a little excessive.. but it definitely makes for one kick ass office.

Bootleg Snowbarding the Zi8 at BigWhite – literally!

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:59:18 +0000

Today while going for a ride at Big White I decided to strap the Zi8 on to my boot/leg using some electrician tape and see what kinda shots i would get! This was shot at 720p@60fps however premiere only wanted to do 29fps so its down sampled a bit; However I don’t think you tube supports higher than 30fps so it all works out for now

This video just may be one of the more extreme tests for the Kodak Zi8’s built in image stabilization. In the near future i’m going to have to build some sort of a compact Steadicam

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxupvk8WIPs

How to upgrade your iMac Hard Drive

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:30:53 +0000

Being a techy, before i even booted up my iMac I had to upgrade the hard drive to a 1TB WD Digital Black Drive…. At first glance you would wonder where the heck are the screws! Apple loves clean sleek lines and is all about style. To find the first round of screws you will need to find your self a suction cup to pop out the front glass.

Once you have found your suction cup pick a side of the glass and carefully pull the glass up. (the glass is only held in by magnets)

Next go to your work shop and find a torx screw driver to remove the army of screws holding the aluminum bezel together.

After removing the Ram cover on the bottom of the screen (using a Philips screw driver) Start at the top of the screen and pop the bezel off.

Next you have another batch of torx screws to remove the iMac screen. Once you have removed all the screws there is a plug in the top right of the screen that needs to be unplugged.

You have finally made it! Remove your old hard drive and upgrade away!

Now that you have successfully upgraded your hard drive.. perform the steps in reverse and don’t forget to plug that lcd connector back in. You will need to boot off your osx cd to do a fresh install.

Kodak Zi8 Test footage

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:56:22 +0000

After having the Kodak ZI8 for a while I made a few photos and while snowboaring at Big White ski resort. The video is pretty jerky and fast paced (a steady cam would of done wonders!) but it gives you a good idea of fast paced footage.

View from my room in the morning

Snowboarding above the clouds.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxwlzq00xAY

Note to self: find a steady cam!

To see the full review check out: Zi8 Review

Kodak Zi8 Review

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:10:54 +0000

After a week or so of comparisons and watching countless demo videos I decided to take the plunge and order my new Zi8. About five days later I received it in the mail along with my 16 gig class 6 SD card. The Zi8 is extremely small for video camera standards. This may not be quite on part with full size video cameras but for its size I can’t complain.

The 16 SD card allows me to shoot about 2 hours and 50 minutes of video at 1080p or 720p @ 60fps. 720p @ 30fps allows you almost double the recoding time. After playing with multiple formats I have found 720p @ 60fps to be the ideal all around shooting mode. 1080p had a very crisp picture but I lacked the smooth playback that 60fps provided. Below is a video I shot at 720p@60fps of an original steam engine train.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOqkw7FuUMc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGy-pvw8Pz0

The Zi8 also comes with a built in 5mp camera. Image quality on the camera is exceptional for a video camera providing you have lots of light and a steady hand. The zi8 wont exactly allow you to print out poster size pictures but it will defiantly suffice for internet or those in the moment snap shot pictures. The image below was shot of the same train on an overcast cloudy day. The originality image was 3072x1728 but was re-sized to 1200x675 for internet use.

Kettle Valley Train Steam Engine

Night videos / pictures were a little to grainy for my liking so make sure there is adequate lighting.

The image stabilization works fairly well, which is a definite plus. The Zi8 uses a digital image stabilization rather then optical which isnt the best but its better then any of the other pocket cameras I have seen. The shot below was taken zoomed in while driving down the road, its not actually crisp but not to bad considering the car I was in has extremely stiff suspensions and it was a very bumpy ride.

Zi8 Image Stabilization

The built in mic has decent quality but an external mic can make a huge difference. The older firmware (1.1-1.2) was known to have a slight high pitch sound in the back ground. This can be fixed in about 2 minuets with a simple frimware update.

All in all for 220$ cdn I am very pleased with this camera. The quality is excellent providing adequate lighting, and its perfect internet video and its small enough to have in your pocket to capture those random moments.